


life during wartime

by sade12



Category: American Psycho - All Media Types
Genre: Depersonalization, Dissociation, Gen, patrick takes drugs and has a bad day as usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 13:32:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11829759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sade12/pseuds/sade12
Summary: patrick tweaks a lil bit





	life during wartime

**Author's Note:**

> thailand. craig. tim. patrick. expensive restaurant. what more do u want.  
> last night i had incense going strong and I was very bored and inspired to write. fast forward 3 hours, I have this open in focuswriter with no recollection of writing it. ooooop  
> I was like... trying to make it funny as well as serious. lately I'm interested in the mess that was the pharmaceutical industry in the late eighties and I thought how would my angel, my baby boy have coped... is this fic funny or sad? vote now on your brick phones  
> enjoy tho... thanks for reading babies!!! blessed be and have a good day. let me know what u think, it would be much appreciated and push me to create moreee  
> PS. GET READY FOR SOME BITCHIN' ITALLICS I OVERUSE IT LIKE HELL IN THIS BUT IT'S INTENTIONAL

Just a week ago I was prescribed a new set of pills that, as I remember seeing on a fast-paced advertisement for it some time ago, can induce nausea, insomnia, nervousness, bloating, and sweating.

My older pills, diagnosed for the same reason, also had an advertisement; a woman introduced them and said, in the friendliest voice, that some users may experience changes in behavior, hostility, agitation, depressed moods, hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, psychosis, malaise.

The amount of different medications offered for depressive symptoms is very off-putting because none of them have any real effect. That, or they alter your amydgala so much they make it actually worse- incompetent doctors making incompetent medications, fucking _psychosis,_ are you _kidding-_ but there’s nothing I can do about that. At the very least, it helps me look at life less intensely for an hour or so at a time. Don’t be fooled, though. These things don’t help my reality, they don’t even have the faintest semblance of trying to do what they’re intended to. No direction, no purpose. I walk around and try to decide what to do; I rub at my shoulders, run a towel all over myself and turn off my shower and have a coarse glass of water. 

I understand, the brain is a callous, exclusionary beast that refuses to be grasped by mankind and, due to such, we will never fully understand ourselves and preparing effective, safe medications- especially for mental illness- is next to impossible. One in every ten people experiences depression, and with the amount of people on Earth that is a sizable problem. Depressed people need hope, they need answers, and then come big companies to the supposed 'rescue'. Here we go. Rehabilitation, is it? _Is that what you want?_ Is that what you _need?_ Is that what _I_ need? Yes. And they're going to save us. Who? _Pharmaceutical companies._ The saviors of the modern, developed, post-mental-illness world. This comes with an omnipresent catch: _they don't fucking work._ Pharmaceutical companies are so scared the next generations will point out their _ever-increasingly evident faults in manufacture_ and boycott them, they want to suppress the masses by pushing _more_ out- _clearly they use too much of their own product if they actually believe this will work-_ and they claim _everyone is mentally ill,_ and by now they are out to kill, literally rather than figuratively. Is this a severe idea gone too far or is it the actual _solution_ for a mass-population problem? No, of course not, Patrick. What caused this situation? Mental illness and greed. It’s been said the way to solve a problem is to flip it, which suggests for this particular problem, safe people and equally distributed wealth.

That’s pretty funny. If fucking only.

Is mass corporate sponsored genocide overdue? Most definitely. People aren’t normally born vengeful, that only happens when they see injustice and human emotions or whatever drive them to action. Anything that can make a large sum of people so angry they make physical picket signs to show their discontent to it must be a monumental driving factor. I’m part of the problem because I’m indifferent. What is there to do? Let the fire grow, instigate further, recede back, watch, accept my lack of control.

I spend a lot of time debating my philosophy, not doing much of anything, rotating my wrist to hear the pills shudder and shake around. In around thirty minutes I have to leave so I can catch up with McDermott for dinner like I promised. I promised I’d show up, and now that I have, I may as well fill in because I have no reason not to regardless of how much I wouldn’t prefer to. Normally I’m excellent at evading my obligations. As of now, I’m pondering how little I’m going to enjoy today’s outing. Often I will be enjoying activities or sometimes even a party but then my interest in it drops off and I’m left feeling nothing- which is what these pills are for.

While I’m on this subject I felt no significant changes in my behavior upon taking my old ones and, if anything, I felt very moderately alleviated. Shallow. I also took two with a dissociative as an experiment of their potency and I became entirely detached from my body, the sky closed in on me, and all my wildest imaginations came true as I was swathed in a powerful euphoria. It was great.

I take two pills from both pill bottles and drink an energy drink because an instant dose of lethargy hit me in the back of the head the second I took the pills, which I take as a bad omen. In a few hours, I’ll be back home, and I’ll explain my experience to my analyst the next time I see her. I’ll write it down, too. Let’s see what happens.

I do these things to maintain my own prestige, not for anyone around me, no- to uplift myself.

“I mean, I was thinking about Japanese or something,” McDermott says, picking at a small yet very conspicuous bump on the bottom of his chin with an unpolished silver piece of cutlery- a fork, double-pronged only- “or this Thai place on the East Side, but Zagat says there’s rats in there.”

“Rats in there,” I echo, nodding. Where am I? 

“There’s no rats in Thai restaurants,” Price says. “Isn’t it all germ free, or something?”

“Germ free or something,” I echo.

“That doesn’t mean rats won’t eat it.”

“I thought it did. What kind of rat eats _tofu?”_

“Like I said, rats will eat anything. Uh, I don’t think Thai restaurants even carry tofu.”

I am hit with a wave of vicious nausea building up in my sternum and sinking down into my abdominal muscles, where it implodes and I poorly suck in a gag. Price looks at me because I made a sound. I scratch the back of my head and form a smile.

“Bateman, you’re smart. Okay, do rats eat tofu? No, right?”

“They’re indiscriminate,” but it doesn’t feel like I say this. I’m slowly dematerializing and rematerializing on the spot and as I pull down my hand it seems to fade away from me; I can feel my pupils dilating, I can hear a frequency reminiscent of seventeen or nineteen hertz resonating throughout my mind. This should concern me, but nothing in particular has happened yet as far as I'm aware so I assume I’m more or less fine. 

“Bull- _shit,”_ Price says. 

“Listen, regardless of what they eat- or _don’t-_ be happy we’re not there, okay?” 

“Have you guys seen my wallet,” I say to no one in particular.

“Your what?”

I notice the subtleties. On his left arm, one of McDermott’s jacket’s accent buttons is unbuttoned- the middle one, which bothers me. His hair is combed straight down instead of slightly to the left as I saw it last time. Price’s left sock is pulled up a fraction of an inch higher than his other. He also smells like a book- an old, dusty book, which tells me this was not his first excursion today. His socks aren’t even visible but I can tell one is solid and one is patterned. I whine to myself over this.

“What happened to it?”

“Never- never mind,” I say, hovering dangerously close to tears. My mood then changes and it’s like I never wanted to cry at all. “So, what are we _eating,_ gentlemen?”

“If you guys want Thai so bad we can do something next week,” McDermott mutters. He seems actually angered for some reason, but he’s acting like it’s sardonic. I haven’t seen him this irritable in ages. Something about the way he continues to puncture his bump fills me with a similar anger.

“Relax, _relax._ This place is fine.”

"It's, you know. I've been craving Tuscan lately, so..."

“Oh, I forgot to ask. Can I just pick the next restaurant?”

“The last time you did that, there were rats.”

"There was one and it was eight tables away." They both look immeasurably discomforted with each others' presence. “The fuck is it with you and rats?”

I imagine this escalating and them stabbing each other with honed chair legs but instead they both calm down when we’re poured water. This conversation is futile. Is there even a fucking point? A conversation’s intent determines it’s content and there’s nothing for me here. I am overcome with impulsive, violent urges and I relieve these by kicking a table leg. It feels orgasmic. For a moment I enter the ocean and feel peace and everything feels serenely dreamlike and I bask in the beauty.

“Mermaids aren’t women with beautiful hair and amazing physiques,” I say, my eyes watering again. “They’re fish.”

"What?"

“We’re talking about rats, not fish.”

“Oh, God. Can you put that down already?” 

“Can I? What? You started it.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Uh, yes, you did. _Bateman.”_ He turns to me. “You saw that, right? Heard that?”

When I don’t respond, McDermott says “Okay, okay, forget it. We can find Thai somewhere else.”

“How about now since we don’t even have _menus_ yet?”

“Oh, right.”

Suddenly they’re both very loud and screeching at no one in particular about menus and I slam my face into the table but neither of them hear or notice and nor does anyone else. My brain clatters around in his skull- in _my_ skull- my entire frontal lobe is absent and I can feel it from the gonglike sound it makes upon every forced contact with bone. I untether myself from this earth and enter limbo- I float aimlessly and weightlessly for three thousand years. Reality is cold and biting and I am at peace here. I'm getting looser and looser and looser and...

____

____

I am filled with violent stomach cramps.

“Have you two ever considered introducing rope to your intimate relationship?” I say.

"Uh..."

They quiet down. They glance at each other, and then back to me. Price sips his water but doesn't take his eyes off of me. He makes the expression one does when they're home alone and they hear a large banging sound from a previously thought empty room. He gives McDermott a sideglance and says “When you’re really hungry it starts to go to your head" so quietly I think he's afraid of my presence.

“Must be." McDermott puts on his thinking cap and tries to change the subject. I seem to have made them particularly uncomfortable. Upon the revelation of this I start to wonder if they actually are intimate. "I wonder if they do Thai here.”

“Oh, come on. That has to be a joke. You said it yourself. Tuscan.”

“It’s not. I really, really want Thai food now,” McDermott says, observingly. 

“Have you ever met a Thai person?”

“That’s a pretty random question.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but I mean...” Price makes that drunk face. “There’s Thai food _everywhere,_ but no mention of _Thailand_ or actual _Thai_ people. Does the US even have relations with them? Good ones? What if all Thai food is just repackaged Chinese food with a splash of... Thai-ish culture?”

"Thai-ish?"

"I'm being serious. What do they look like? You have, you know. China, Japan, Korea, uh... I don't know, Israel, but nobody talks about Thailand."

_"Israel,"_ McDermott starts laughing. "You're a riot tonight."

"Is that not in...?" 

“Bateman, help us out. Know any Thai people that are here legally?”

"Or illegally, we're"- he mimics my voice- "indiscriminate."

They laugh together, they laugh at me. I am filled with a silent anger. These are my friends. The anger inverts and I start crying. It’s very embarrassing. It's very intense and I start to whine. I cover my face with my hands but they hear me and look at me strangely and ask me if I’m crying, but by then I’ve lost the desire to cry and I’m filled with an exuberant happiness. “No. No.”

They look at me with bewildered, disgusted expressions. "I was joking," Price says.

This is when I realize something is severely wrong and I pardon myself to the restroom.

I stare at myself in the mirrors for an undetermined, blank amount of time. I look into my own eyes, reflecting my own gaze, scrutinizing my features, pondering my next decision but my own good will escapes me and I consider leaving. If I did I'd be leaving those two in a very finicky situation.

A woman enters the restroom with me; she dismisses me. She pays no attention to me and lights a cigarette. I look back at myself. I turn back and she’s not wearing flats. Nothing on her is dull, everything is shining or reflective in some way; she’s wearing aviators inside a building, they are mirrored and I wonder what she’s looking at. Her makeup is by no means natural, she has the entire blue-eyeshadow-red-lipstick thing. Miniskirt, it hurts to look at. Her skin has this intangible glossiness and I think that’s what got her into this restaurant in the first place because she looks so out of place; the strictly enforced death code- dress code, I meant- is _little black dress or black tie._ And, she...

I feel like I’m not describing this well. Let me try again. Okay.

Golden turban that I can’t identify, it looks sub-Saharan African, maybe Nigeria, it’s wrapped by hands that couldn’t have been hers. Red stiletto fingernails done by a Korean expert. She goes to that one beautician just off 50th. Okay, that sounds right so far. Native American headdress, reflective windbreaker- but she’s wearing a fur coat under it; long mascara caked on. She’s covered in blood and sequins, she’s holding a bus pass, she has absolutely no skin at all. Sequins, polished red lip gloss, dark skin, a panther-appearing fur coat, Syrian rebel army gear, a thirty-foot longsword, sequins, Turkish Royals cigarettes hanging off a string tied to her leg, saddle shoes, thirty-five different necklaces, menstrual blood coated on her fingertips, blue skin reminiscent of some kind of Hindu deity, sequins.

“What the fuck,” I say.

“Excuse me?” she says, her voice too masculine to be a woman and I am overcome with fear it’s actually a man.

“Stop it. I have to go,” I say, confused, pushing past her, carefully making sure I make no physical contact with her. I can’t let her touch me.

"Patrick? Patrick," say voices calling out for me.

I can’t bear it anymore. In the reception area I see Price and McDermott walking around, most likely looking for me, and I shove my way through a line until I’m outside in the wilderness again. I hear some of their conversation- 'you should probably apologize' 'over what, it was a joke' 'still' 'he was acting kind of weird, wasn't he' 'that's just his sense of humor, I guess'-. Sensations go into death throes within my stomach and I hold myself carefully as I take up and down the street with no real direction. Before I leave for good I stand on the outside, peering in.

I run north, I walk south. Everything goes too fast for five minutes and I process none of it, seeing as it’s all too much, and I can no longer contain myself and I walk into a small wine shop. It’s altered from how I remember it; it’s full of doors that go nowhere and endlessly repetitive corridors...

I walk around for ages. I walk past countless stonefaced clones of each other until the hours get later and the populace funnels itself out and I’m left walking mainly alone, stray customers passing by every couple of minutes. My anger is not exerted so I plan to leave silently. I round the corner too fast and look down an array of Chardonnay and I am spotted by a ginger twink. It’s too late to escape. There is no ascent.

“Hi,” he says.

I sit there silently, feeling jaundice slither up onto me. I don’t have anything to say. He blinks for a while and he makes that face that’s characteristic of Jean, the one where she reads people by squinting her eyes and lowering her eyebrows. She should really, really, really, really, really, really start wearing more makeup. I fucking hate natural looks. Women should stop that.

“What are you doing here,” I say, though I don’t really want to know.

“I was going to see a movie,” he says. He looks around and then confesses, “and I was going to try to slip this in with me.”

“That’s fucking evil,” I say. I drag it out so it doesn’t sound as rude as it could, but this isn’t intentional. It happens and I make up an interpretation for it. My voice slurred on it’s own.

He assumes I was joking. He smiles and turns back to whatever he was looking at. I start to sweat. Some time ago, someone I sort of knew overdosed and died as opposed to being sad I was more confused than anything. I pick at lint on my shoulder. We sit there in silence. I very slightly regret leaving the restaurant because, in despite of my suffering, I wouldn’t mind food of a Tuscan nature right now. My decisions have consequences. My decisions have impacting, real-world consequences. I am overcome with sadness and self-pity and I consider dragging myself back to them but I can't bring myself to do it. I stand there motionless and miserable until Carruthers talks to me again.

“Would you like to come with me?”

“What?”

“To the movie.”

“I can’t go to the movies with a criminal,” I say, and I grab the bottle from his hand and put it back onto the rack. He takes it back. This only seems to be funny to me and I accept the reality that I thought I was being clever but I was not. My mood sinks and my eyes start watering again.

“I’m being serious. If you’re wondering what it is, though, it’s just a... It's like a..." I stare at him. I think this pressures him to get it right, because he stops stuttering. "I think it’s an adaptation of some book. A romance novel?”

“Not sure...” I choke on this and I start crying again for a moment but it ends immediately and I’m left a blank slate. I wipe my face before he can look back at me.

“Not sure?”

“If I wanna go. I’ve had a bad night.”

"What happened?"

When I don't say anything, he goes into compliant mode. It disinterests me... “Uh, well, you might enjoy it, you know? So maybe next time?”

I force a laugh. Particles run hot inside of my veins. I switch my stance to seem more casual and not like I have a pole up my ass. I lean on a wine stand. I can’t make myself sound angry despite how much I’d like to and how much I’d love to exhaust my vocabulary on him; whenever I try to feign or actually create any emotion I just become excessively saddened.

“Don’t do this. Ha. Don't ask me that. You’re putting me in an awkward situation.”

He makes a distraught expression and it bites me somehow. I wonder what kind of teeth it has, because they hurt.

“Awkward? Why is it..." he reaches out for me, "awkward?”

____

____

I pull back from him and he also draws back his hand quickly as if he'd been burned. "I don’t know. I just can’t go. I have things to do.”

I say that, but I don't even know what it means. I'm not busy. Quite realistically, I've never been, actually. I'm just now witnessing who I am in reality and I'm more or less disgusted by it.

“Well, I guess I’ll just... see you around?”

"You're seeing a movie at 11 PM?"

"It's not that late."

"If you aren't careful, you might be robbed. Lots of complete psychos running around nowadays."

"I guess so," and he looks at me with a face that defies description.

We stare at each other for far too long. So long it becomes tense and uncomfortable. I’m about to bluntly mention he’s describing a date, but the lethargy I feel combined the fact I just technically stranded Price and McDermott in a similar situation would make me a hypocrite so I can’t play that card. I am left with a horrible amalgamation; destructive amounts of self doubt. Instead, I say, “Okay, well... Not in this lifetime, Carruthers. It can’t happen. This”- I press my index and middle finger together and point at him and myself repeatedly in a swishing motion- “can’t happen, and it won’t.” 

"I know," he says.

I’m the first to divide us. I turn and leave the store, silent and devoid of emotion. I’m motionless at the door for a moment as I reflect on what just happened. Stomach cramps stir within me once again.

Today I’ve needlessly- for the most part- canceled on three people. I start crying again and there’s nothing I can do about it this time, so I sink onto the steps of the wine shop’s door and bundle myself up there. I get up, now angry, and grab the first wine bottle I see inside- Bordeaux- and make off with it.

Someone jumps me so I hit him with the bottle without thinking. I keep the glass shards as a personal attestment to victory. I’m jumped again later and I hit them with the now broken shards, tearing into their skin and destroying their cheek muscles and searing teeth out from the molars, ripping through nerves which probably leads to immeasurable, mind-bending pain. For one of them I pour what I can of the Bordeaux into his eyes and shove the cork into the left, which pops it similarly to how you’d pop a balloon full of nitrogen or something. That’s not right, is it? Helium, I mean. I start crying again. And then I’m angry, and then I’m crying again. And then I’m angry, and then I’m crying again.

I have no accountability for the rest of the night. But I do arrive home, I stop everything and it's not until I stand in my bathroom and get a hard look at myself that I arrive to a conclusion and my body neatly wraps up the entire ordeal. 

Nothing happens and I feel nothing.

Today my bed is much warmer than anticipated. There's no place safer than this to sleep but I feel rejected by it somewhat and I, instead, settle for the couch. I turn off the lights.

I laugh for a while at the word Patricide and lament my lack of purpose and find a movie similiar to the one described to me earlier. I feel nothing about it though I suppose I should feel disconcerted in some way. I decide to stay up all night and around one I get an angry voicemail by Price calling me an asshole for ditching and he apologizes for what he said but it does not sound genuine so I shut down to external stimuli again.

I suppose I, in this moment, am doing now what the brain does now on antidepressants- enduring the trauma through the sole way, eliminating all external awareness of the pain and receding. Those are my friends. My friends who talk to me and at me, but never with me. I have no friends and I have nothing and I have to go to work in the morning. Carruthers is going to get drunk tonight and I could have joined him. I could have actually had something to eat but instead I'm here with many side effect permutations of an empty stomach. Hatred has made me hard, solid, rigid. There undeniably are multiple causes, of course, but I cannot demarcate... who did what. Who is the most responsible for this. Is it me? Is it? Is this it? Is it?

Material goods can... thaw me. Even if only for a temporary amount of time. I've surpassed my need for anything. I'm so tired. The more I think, the more I feel a subtle desire to cry, which I eventually succumb to. Which is strange, because my medications all wore off. This time I don't stop crying after a few moments, I just cry. I cry until I fall asleep. Images of all degrees from romantic to violent move at varying speeds. My dreams are in color and sound.

“So,” I hear high heels tracing around; “you did take them, didn’t you? Two, as I recommended?”

“I did.”

“That’s good. I’m glad you remembered to. This is the beginning of more positive aspects to your life.” My analyst smiles at me. “How was your evening?”

“Stellar.”

“Could you be more descriptive? I’m sorry, I have to-”

“No, that’s fine. It was very nice.”

“Right off the bat?”

“Yes.”

“Did you write anything down?”

The notebook she gave me was empty when I woke up. I think I was going to write something, but admittedly I'm glad I didn't. I'm not making progress. “No." But that's okay. I'm cured. Completely.

“That’s fine. Try to do it tonight so we’ll have an... eyewitness testimony, huh?”

She's too much like Evelyn somehow, I don't know. It's very annoying. She just sees me as another ill person coming off a product line and she only cares about my money at the end of these three hours and that's okay. That's so fine. “Okay.”

What if her impression of me is wrong? Can I say this is deliberate and I've been joking with her? Do I need new medication? Yes.

“Could you list some events?”

“I went to dinner with two friends, and saw a movie with a colleague.”

“That’s great. I’m glad your social life is improving.” She writes my words down. I stare at her hands and think about transubstantiation. Blood into wine and vice versa.

"Me too."

“And you were emotionally stable throughout?”

I ponder how the last few months have been in comparison to last night, and I smile very brightly and tell her what she'd like to hear. My social life is not improving. It's not. Delusional bitch. Delusional bitch. I smile harder and wider. 

“Yes.”


End file.
